January and February mark the awards season for music and movies. The Peoples’ Choice Awards aired in January; The Grammy’s have passed as well; and the Oscars _will also have been awarded by time this issue hits your desk.

I don’t see nearly as many films as I’d like to or award shows for that matter. But I do have strong opinions about the things I have seen. Argo was fantastic for a lot of reasons — the attention to detail and accuracy, the acting, the cinematography. It was worth my money as the buyer. Life of Pi was good, disturbing at times, but good. I’m glad I spent my $9 to see it. I enjoyed Skyfall as well, happy to part with my dollars.

Next are the award presentations. The Oscars are voted for by their own — votes come from the more than 6,000 major players in the movie industry and Academy members. Similar for the music industry’s Grammys. These are the stakeholders in those industries and hardly objective. I imagine there is a lot of bias and politics involved and not at all, to my understanding, reflective of the viewing audience — the people that vote with their hard-earned money every day.

But the Peoples’ Choice Awards are just that — voted for by the people. Anyone can go online and vote. No bias here. The voter either liked the movie, or they didn’t. Simple. Pure.

There have been a number of awards programs in our own industry. Some have come and gone, many of them with somewhat sketchy voting processes.

But our own Dealers’ Choice Awards, launched in 1997, is akin to the Peoples’ Choice Awards in that it is a pure and simple vote by the dealer — the one voting with his or her money when they place an order. This year, 1,576 dealers came to the FCW booth at Surfaces to vote. A Dealers’ Choice win is something to be proud of, to tout, to strive for. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners featured on page 6.

FCW’s GreenStep Award program is just ahead of us — entries are due this week. The voting is not done within the group of entrants nor by our staff here but by an esteemed panel of industry association execs with deep knowledge of the different product categories, the sustainable challenges, progress made and so much more. This year’s panel, as it has been in previous years, will include Bob Peoples of CARE, Michael Martin of NWFA, Bill Dearing of NALFA, Bill Griese of TCNA, Cammie Wietzel of WFCA and Dean Thompson of RFCI.

And it’s not always the big blockbuster companies that take home the “statue” or in this case, the beautiful hand-blown glass pieces of art. The 2012 Pinnacle winner was Crossville, beating out larger makers in the industry. The awards for Pinnacle, Product, Process and Promotion have gone to companies such as Mannington, MPGlobal, Shaw, Quick-Step to name just a few over the years.

This too is an award to be proud of, tout and strive for. I encourage you to enter and be a part of something great.